Overview
Telnet is a tool for administrating servers remotely. The name stands for Teletype Network and was invented pre-internet. As a consequence it is also an unencrypted way of communicating with a server. It should therefore not be used over the internet as the traffic may be intercepted, for example using Wireshark.
Apart from servers it can also talk to other equipment such as network switches and routers. If the equipment is old, it might only be able to use Telnet instead of the encrypted tool called SSH (Secure Shell).
It is a command line tool that you can run on Windows, Mac and Linux which communicates bidirectionally.
From a technical point of view it is a client/server type of protocol. The terminal captures keystrokes, the client converts it to a universal language that then goes through the TCP/IP protocol and through a network virtual terminal which sets a mutual standard for both machines.
It then goes through the TCP/IP stack on the receiving server side, the Telnet server converts/reverses the universal language to a language that the receiving system understands. The pseudoterminal then executes the commands and runs the applications.
Activating and deactivating Telnet Client
On a Windows machine you can activate it by going to the control panel, then select programs and features, then press "turn Windows features on or off".
You can run the following commands to either activate or deactivate Telnet.
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName TelnetClient
Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName TelnetClient
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